E3 2006: The Ant Bully Hands-On

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Big adventures in a little world!

By Andrew Alfonso

Today at Midway's booth we were able to check out an early version of The Ant Bully, a game which is based on an upcoming movie by Warner Bros. In The Ant Bully, Lucas Nickle floods an ant colony with his watergun, and then by some force of nature, he's magically shrunken down to insect size and sentenced to hard labor in the ruins. As you know, after someone gets shrunken, hilarity will always ensue!

The game version of The Ant Bully is a 3rd person action/adventure game where you will actually play out a lot of the tasks that Lucas will do in the game. In the demo that we were able to check out, the leader of the ant colony demanded that we help him gather some food for the other denizens of the colony.

Lucas has two weapons available to him, a mid-range water squirter that he can use to stun enemies, and an ugly stick that you can uglify critters with. The water gun has a finite amount of water with it, but you can always refill it by finding a water source. With the ugly stick, you can chain up to three attacks together to put down someone for good.

The mission we had was quite interesting, and some of the mechanics were really cool. Even though Lucas is a human, he can still telepathically communicate with other ants when standing in certain spots. We saw this when Lucas stood on an icon, and then telepathically asked the other ants to stand on top of each other to form a ladder, so that Lucas could reach a piece of candy for the colony leader.

The only type of enemy that appeared in the demo were earwigs, which were able to roll up into a ball and spin into you. But these attacks were easily dealt with by simply hitting them. There wasn't any target lock that we saw in the game, but since the title is in early development, that might be something that will be implemented later.

The developers did a good job in recreating a world for the mini-Lucas to run around, and natural elements that normally wouldn't be dangerous -- such as waterdrops -- are actually fatal. Your ant companions populate the world you're in, and they go about their business as you have to do your time in the colony.

Scheduled for release sometime this year when the movie debuts, The Ant Bully appears to be a cheap cash-in, but it's shaping up to be a solid action/adventure title that fans of the genre can really get into. Look for more information soon!